


sooner or later

by larkdee



Category: Bartimaeus - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Friendship/Love, M/M, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 02:55:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13308939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkdee/pseuds/larkdee
Summary: “I’m beginning to wonder,” Bartimaeus says through his nausea, “if hell has an exchange program.”Even if he hears, Nathaniel does not deign the comment with a response.Or: a series of chapters in which bartimaeus and nathaniel fall in love, fall out of love, and ptolemy is the sweetest thing anyone could ever ask for.





	1. in which bartimaeus meets ptolemy

Bartimaeus isn’t quite sure what he wants.

He only knows that his heart stutters unpleasantly whenever Ptolemy glances up at him, soft hair flopping down and a faint smile edging up the corners of his mouth, and that he feels so tightly wound-up he can barely breathe. He can’t concentrate on the stack of papers in front of him. At least, not when Ptolemy’s right there — and all Ptolemy is doing is fucking  _reading._

The sensation is unfamiliar as it is unexpected. He doesn’t like it one bit. 

_For God’s sake, Rekhyt, get your shit together._

He eyeballs the worksheet in front of him. It’s something about Lewis structures and chemical compounds. Bartimaeus wracks his brain for some vestigial knowledge on Professor Faquarl's lecture last week and comes up blank; likely because he’d spent a majority of that lecture lobbing spitballs into the back of Faquarl’s starched tweed jacket. 

Ptolemy, as is typical, has already finished the worksheet and is busily completing the coursework for the next two weeks. Bartimaeus resists the urge to pout, settling instead for a winning smile. And an outstretched hand. “D’ you mind?”

His best friend raises an eyebrow slowly. (Bartimaeus has a love-hate relationship with that eyebrow.)

“Rekhyt— you can't expect to pass this class if you never complete your own work,” Ptolemy chides, but he’s half-laughing. He has a nice smile. It's full of shiny white teeth and dimpled cheeks.

Bartimaeus’ heart does that stupid stutter again. He clears his throat and plucks the worksheet neatly out of Ptolemy's hand. “That’s where you come in, Ptol." 

Time runs its course through the metaphorical hourglass, and before long the library reaches its closing time. It’s dark outside. The air feels cool and damp from a mid-afternoon rain. Ptolemy bids Bartimaeus a quiet “goodnight, my friend,” and Bartimaeus responds in kind—which, for him, means stealing several more of Ptolemy’s worksheets and vaulting over the stairwell’s banister with a wicked laugh.

 

                                                                                                                 * * * * *

 

It all starts a little something like this.

Bartimaeus is eighteen years old, scrappy and acerbic, jaded far past his time. He’s made up of fluid angles in a lithe body tanned a perpetual summer-brown. The day he moves away from home, he throws all of Nathaniel’s things that he can find into a battered cardboard box. There's not much left - Nat has already done a sweep several weeks back, breezing arrogantly in and out of the house without so much as a "hello." Still, there were scraps left behind, and Bartimaeus dumps them in the box with a vengeance. 

And then he chucks that box into a lake.

It makes a satisfying splash, but what’s even  _more_ satisfying is the look on Nat’s face after he finds out. Bartimaeus is half-tempted to take a picture and frame it, but he resists. He has marvelous self-control.

Queezle gives him a ride to the airport. He doesn’t look back.

 

                                                                                                                * * * * * 

 

Bartimaeus has learned enough tricks to get him through high school— and where his charm doesn’t pave the way, well, he’s always been an unblushing cheat.

University, as it turns out, is on a whole new  _plane._

He’s late to the first day of class, after sleeping through his alarm and then getting stuck in the dorm elevator that smells like weed. When he finally reaches the lecture hall, irritated and out-of-breath, Bartimaeus finds that it doesn’t exactly help things to slam the set of double-doors open and collapse into the nearest empty seat with an echoing yawn, either.

All it does, in fact, is draw every single set of eyes in the hall to him. Including that of Nubiani Faquarl, his chemistry professor, who then proceeds to spend the next fifteen minutes admonishing Bartimaeus for his behavior and appointing to him the holy duty of scrubbing every single chalkboard after class.

Needless to say, it is the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship.

(Bartimaeus stalks out afterward, incensed, trailing a cloud of chalk dust in his wake.)

The next class, Bartimaeus shows up ten minutes early and takes a seat in the very back row. Faquarl is already at the front, his massive arms folded, a piece of chalk spinning between two fingers. They fix each other with a set of equally scorching glares.

“Made an enemy out of Professor Faquarl already, have you?” says a quiet voice. Teasing. 

Bartimaeus looks to his right.

There’s a boy sitting there. He’s smallish and dark-skinned; his eyes look out brightly under the fringe of hair falling across his face. “I’m Ptolemy,” he says, and smiles. It's a rather nice smile. His teeth are very white. 

And his hand, smooth and slender, is outstretched. 

It doesn’t take Bartimaeus much effort (at all, if he's honest) to smile back, and say, “Bartimaeus,” and shake. 

 

And that is how it begins.

 


	2. in which bartimaeus has too much to drink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the tone of this fic is kind of all over the place, but this piece is mostly for practicing my writing, so that's all right. anyway, the chapter title kind of explains it all.

The first time he meets Nathaniel, Bartimaeus is sixteen years old and drunk out of his mind. 

Okay, so maybe he’s had one glass too many of spiked punch, and he might’ve lost count of the number of vodka jellies he’s swallowed, but at the end of it all, the result is the same. 

E.g: him, droopy-eyed and flushed red, bending over the side of a sofa to vomit up the dredges in his stomach right into Nathaniel’s pretty lap. 

The sound the other boy makes is a cross between a snarl and a squeal. They both pause. Bartimaeus sways a little, and somewhere in the fogginess of his brain he is reminded to slur out an apology. 

“You--you--” The way Nathaniel stutters might almost be cute if you like them stiff and serious and awkward. Bartimaeus smiles a little droopily; a muscle throbs in the side of Nathaniel’s cheek. 

Queezle comes up behind them. It’s her party, after all, and she has to make sure her guests don’t maul each other before the night is out. She jerks the two of them by the collar, leads them to the bathroom, and tosses a towel in after them before slamming the door shut. The sound of music still thumps through the walls, and somewhere else in the house there is the sound of breaking glass. 

Bartimaeus comes back to himself enough to dimly register the feel of smooth porcelain beneath his chin. It takes a moment before he makes it out to be the side of a toilet bowl. 

The thought comes at just the right moment, it seems, because a second later he’s coughing up the rest of his guts into it. Nathaniel makes a sound of contempt; he’s changed out his slacks and is leaning against the sink, in his underwear, scrubbing at his clothes with the towel. 

“Are you always this much of an idiot?” he asks. His accent is posher than anything Bartimaeus has heard before, all crisp vowels and intonations that stink of old money. 

Bartimaeus rests his forehead on the toilet seat and swallows hard. He’s never drinking again, that he’s sure of. Ever. Well--at least, not this much. That lesson he’s learned the hard way because this fucking sucks. He feels like shit, he never should have come out tonight--fuck, he has that AP Physics test tomorrow that he needs to ace if he wants to scrape at least a B- in the class, and his throat feels like someone’s scraped sandpaper down it, and he’s resting his fucking face against the remnants of someone’s dried-up crap stains, fuck fuck fuck--

“Hey. Are you--are you crying?” 

Bartimaeus draws in a rattling breath and tries to look a bit more dignified than someone draped across a toilet bowl should be. “No.”

“I think you are,” Nathaniel insists, and suddenly he’s too close. Bartimaeus is hyper-aware of the hand that Nathaniel is resting on Bartimaeus’ back. And also of that fact that Nathaniel still has no pants on. Not that there’s much to see, anyway, because he’s looked (of course he has). The other boy’s got chicken legs and worn boxers on, and his knees are as knobbly as a colt’s, so Bartimaeus really shouldn’t be finding him as attractive as he is right now. 

“I--okay. Fine,” Bartimaeus spits, because he’s crap at acting on his emotions and anger always seems easier. “I feel like shit, okay?”

“Maybe if you hadn’t drunk so much, you wouldn’t be feeling like this. Or throwing up on people. Have you ever heard of something called ‘self-control’?” 

“Watch out there, bucko, you might need to go to the ER for that stick you’ve got shoved up your ass.” Bartimaeus flashes a tipsy version of his well-used sarcastic grin. The tears have dried by now. All he feels is tired. 

They glare at each other, but it’s halfhearted. 

Nathaniel starts tugging on his pants again, shoving each scrawny leg in one at a time. Bartimaeus pretends to find interest in the black-and-white tiles of the bathroom floor. Maybe he can sleep here tonight, just curled up beside the sink. Queezle won’t mind; he’s helped her out often enough to warrant a quick snooze next to her toilet. At any rate, he’s not going to be able to make the walk back home in one piece. Not if Ezekiel finds him in this state, either. 

Nathaniel is fully dressed again, and nudging him in the side with one well-polished shoe. “Where do you live?” he asks. 

The questioning grunt Bartimaeus gives in return is muffled somewhat by the porcelain he has his cheek pressed against. 

“I’m going to drive you home.” 

Like hell he is. Bartimaeus drags his eyes open wide enough to glare venomously at Nathaniel, who glowers right back. Who knows what funny business Nathaniel has hidden under those sharply-pressed slacks and greasy hair? Besides an uptight personality and uber-controlling mentality on a dangerously high psychological scale, of course. But that’s nothing new. 

Nathaniel is running his hands through that greasy hair right now, actually, and then he’s squatting next to Bartimaeus. A look of contempt passes across his face again. “Look, nothing’s going to happen,” he says. “I’m just going to drive you home.” 

The hypothetical knight in soiled armor, come to drag home a drunken damsel in distress. 

As it turns out, Bartimaeus does feel enough of that distress to allow himself to be hoisted up and guided back through the raging party, which has migrated from the backyard into the living room. Someone sloshes a drink down his back. It soaks into his boxers, making him feel as though he’s wet himself. 

“I’m beginning to wonder,” Bartimaeus says through his nausea, “if hell has an exchange program.”

Even if he hears, Nathaniel does not deign the comment with a response. 

They stagger through the door. It’s dark outside, and the stars up above are glowing faintly. A cold breeze whisks down the street. It takes a while before Nathaniel can remember where he parked his car, and then another few minutes of him fumbling around looking through his pockets for the keys. 

Bartimaeus mumbles out his address and then slumps sloppily in the passenger’s seat of the car (which is a fucking Mercedes). He zones out for the length of time that it takes Nathaniel to navigate to his side of town, and only snaps awake again when he feels the soothing vibrations of the car shudder to a still. 

Bartimaeus looks out the window. The lights are on in the house. He can see the faint silhouette of someone standing at the window, looking out. 

He smells like beer, there’s vomit on his shirt and chin, and he probably looks like he’s been dragged fresh out of hell. 

“How about this,” Bartimaeus pleads. “We drive to another country, change our names. I’ll be someone distinguished named William; you can have a name that suits you, too, like Bob--”

“Bartimaeus,” Nathaniel says, “get out of my car.”

“I’ve heard Paris is quite nice this time of year.”

“Out.”

Bartimaeus unclips his seatbelt and cracks the door open a notch. It’s all very melodramatic and drunken and embarrassing, the way he slides out of the seat and stands miserably on the curb. “Ezekiel’s going to crucify me.”

“Obviously you’ve mistaken me for someone who gives a shit,” Nathaniel replies, and then the car is pulling away. 

He does not end up crucified, but very nearly so. 

Bartimaeus wakes up the next morning in his bed. There’s sunlight streaming across his chest, and the alarm on his side-table is screeching away. He slams his palm down on the snooze button at around the same time that all the memories from the night before come flooding back in a heady rush. 

“Shit,” Bartimaeus says. He flops back and grinds the heel of his palm into his eyes, forcefully, as though he can blot out the events of last night. It doesn’t work. 

He is sixteen years old, he has an AP Physics test today that he has not studied for, and last night he threw up on the boy that he has been crushing on for the past three years.


	3. nathaniel is a creep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm writing out of order. You can assume this takes place a while after the whole drunken-party episode. I need to add several scenes in between that event and this one.

Nathaniel can’t stop watching him. 

It’s terrible, really. He has a calculus midterm next period, and he still hasn’t gotten the hang of multivariable matrices. The numbers are there. His paper and pen are ready. But his focus is slipping, sliding through his hands like butter, as he catches himself glancing up every few minutes to peer at Bartimaeus from under his lashes. 

The other boy is across the room, leaning backward in his chair. There’s a girl sitting next to him, nibbling at the end of a pencil. He’s talking at her rapidly, flicking through a history textbook in his lap, hands motioning every so often. Nathaniel has noticed that Bartimaeus has a tendency to talk with his hands-- all wide motions and elegant fingers curving back and forth. 

Nathaniel’s noticed a lot of things, to be honest. 

For one: Bartimaeus seems to be a very good tutor. The befuddled expression on the girl’s face gradually clears; they talk more animatedly, taking turns to gesture at passages in the textbook. When Bartimaeus throws his head back and laughs, mouth stretching wide, Nathaniel’s gaze lingers on the curve of his lips. They’re dark and smooth, like the rest of him. 

Nathaniel messes up on an equation and has to start over, cursing himself repeatedly in his head. 

Another thing: Bartimaeus lounges like a cat. He’s the very picture of languid grace. There are no awkward bones in his body, just graceful lines that connect together in a map from neck to hip to ankle. His face is much more expressive; even now, as Nathaniel watches, Bartimaeus’ expression flickers from surprised to amused to exasperated. It’s a process of crinkled eyes and wry twitches of his lips. 

Those crinkled eyes flick upwards catch Nathaniel’s gaze. 

Nathaniel flushes, startling slightly. His pen stutters across the paper and rips it. 

Bartimaeus’ darker skin remains an even tawny brown. He holds Nathaniel’s gaze for a moment longer and then glances away. 

The bell rings. With relief, Nathaniel gathers up all his books and hurries away.


End file.
